Remembering Croesus, Serving Darius: Local Elites and Imperial Administration in Early Achaemenid Sardis

Abstract

The conquest of Sardis and the Lydian kingdom was a formative moment in Cyrus’ initial expansion, but the region’s subsequent place in the evolution of the Achaemenid imperial system remains obscure. Herodotus rarely returns to Lydian matters in the later books of the Histories, and the lack of a surviving Lydian documentary record has so far prevented the sort of synchronic regional study of political transition that is possible in the case of late sixth-century Babylonia. Fortunately, the evidentiary situation is beginning to improve, not only with archaeological discoveries of changing settlement patterns at Sardis and across Greater Lydia, but with recent readings of Lydian inscriptions hinting at a funerary cult in honor of Croesus as part of a pragmatic alliance between Persian authorities and Lydian social elites. Travel ration records from the Persepolis Fortification Archives are also revealing the multifaceted traffic that connected the administrative hub of Sardis, overseen by the royal sibling Artaphernes, with the Iranian imperial centers in the reign of Darius I. Several of these texts reveal the satrap’s employment of officials with western Anatolian personal names, broadening our evidence for Lydian and neighboring elites in Persian bureaucratic and military service beyond Herodotus’ occasional references to men such as Myrsos and Pythios. A synthesis of these disparate pieces of evidence offers new insights into the processes of political transition and integration in a vital part of the expanding Achaemenid world.